http://www.thes.co.uk/current_edition/story.aspx?story_id=2030031

with all the background to it here

I don’t know why enrollment in physical sciences is down in US and western Europe, but it is real and damaging and the universities are reacting to it by retreating into “informatics” and psychology.

Sussex has a rather odd Schools system where departments are grouped together in schools. Over the last decade or so physics has moved from MAPS (Mathematical and Physical Sciences) to CPES (Chemistry, Physics and Environmental Science) and more recently to SciTech (Science and Technology) [hopefully I've remembered the acronyms correctly]. From the point of view of students, in the sciences at least, these groupings have no real practical consequences. I’m sure that there are administrative and financial consequences (which as a student I was blissfully unaware of….), but it’s simply not true to say that “The physics department was effectively shut a few years ago”.

The loss of staff from the particle theory group over the last year or so is clearly a bad thing for the physics department and if the group were to die something very special would be lost. However, as far as I’m aware at least, the outcome is far from certain.

The science departments at Sussex are, along with those at many other UK universities, experiencing tough times. There are some excellent physicists at Sussex doing excellent science. Spreading mis-information and presenting speculation as fact is not going improve their position.

Similarly chemistry’s path to demise came when the old MOLS school was shut down and the chemistry department moved into Life Sciences.

The physics department had 33 faculty – 5 professors, 13 readers and 15 lecturers. Astronomy had 5 faculty, for a total of 38 tenure lines.
Current department has a total of 21 physics and astronomy tenure track people.
8 of which are in astronomy.

There are 12 faculty in mathematics now, there used to be 27 tenure track people.

Sussex used to be one of the few UK universities that offered a double honours Mathematical Physics BSc (MPhys now I guess). They apparently no longer do so. Nor is Mathematics with “minor” in Physics offered.

Bastards.

Although Sussex’s department has been saved (it seems), falling numbers enrolling for those courses across the country are inevitably going to mean departments merging or shutting, if the educating aspect of the Department is dominant (of course, if it’s just about the research bucks, that’s different, but I’m not sure it works that way at UK universities so much). Shutting or merging some departments isn’t even a bad decision, although the matter of which ones suffer the knife is obviously a difficult one.

On the issue of physics at A Level, I have some opinions about that, from my own experience:

The IOP physics A-Level course is pretty good (given the need to fit the absurd changes to the A/AS level qualifications, which lessened the value of each individual A Level) but, like Nuffield before it, has to struggle against falling numbers oh physics A Level students, hack exams like those of EDEXEL that promise better grades for less teacher expertise (because there really aren’t close to enough physics teachers in the UK) and the government’s changing moods. The lack of good physics teachers is, I think, the biggest problem of all.

Making physics compulsory in schools up to the age of 16 was only ever going to have considerable benefit if there were enough physics teachers. Many students learn their compulsory physics to GCSE from biologists or chemists who, while hardworking and well-meaning, don’t always have sufficient expertise to create very good lessons in physics. However, why on earth would anyone want to teach physics at UK schools? The alleged solidarity of the teaching profession means that no serious ‘supply versus demand’ decisions can be made on teacher’s salaries; you can get a couple of inducement points to attract a physicist but, really, it’s not enough. No one can bear the idea of physics teachers earning 50-100% more than teachers of other disciplines where there is more competition amongst candidates (rather than competition amongst schools, which is the current situation when it comes to physics hires). However, the difference in ‘A’ Level take-up of physics achieved by having a very good teacher who really knows their physics is huge. The current policy of compulsory physics does mean that we do get a lot of kids at least familiar with physical ideas, who can wire a circuit or a plug, who can understand basic issues, but if we want a lot more physicists, we need better teachers and that means paying physics teachers a lot more for as long as there aren’t enough of them entering the profession. If that upsets English teachers and PE teachers and so on, they can weep their salty tears somewhere else, because there’s plenty of others to replace them.

“Entries in physics had decreased by 35.2% since 1991, while those in maths and chemistry had fallen by 21.5% and 12.6%, he added.”

Hull University last year closed its maths department “because of falling interest among students.” – http://education.guardian.co.uk/universitiesincrisis/story/0,,1411320,00.html

Also, Exeter university closed its “loss-making” chemistry department last year, losing 130 staff and making chemistry becoming a branch of the bioscience department: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4105961.stm see also http://www.exeter.ac.uk/chemweb/

Each year for the last decade, 2 % fewer students have taken physics A-level, so it isn’t surprising that there is a major issue. The key sciences chemistry, physics and maths are all becoming less popular in the UK. Electronics and biosciences are taking up the slack. Students are effectively voting with their UCAS
forms and sacking professors of pure core science subjects, at least in the provincial universities.

However, the war is not won until funding for departments is decoupled from student numbers. Perhaps creating hybrid government labs/universities is a solution? Of course, the chance of this is zero in the current UK (and European) climate of privatising everything.

As it happens, I was recently talking to someone who had a faculty offer from Sussex (not in physics) and my immediate reaction was “You would feel safe at a place willing to do *that* to its chemistry department? What if your department is up for the chop five years from now?”

Sadly, it looks as though they have won the fight, but this brings no credit to the institution.